Sorghum Sugar Cookies: Gluten-free, Dairy-free, Nut-free, Soy-free

Unlike my First Try Friday Posts, this recipe was tweaked until I liked it.

A year ago, I wrote a Christmas short story (click to read it) about a mother making gluten-free sugar cookies for her daughter with Celiac Disease. To go along with it, I created a Joseph-safe recipe for sugar cookies. It was surprisingly harder than I thought. I did a lot of research, but among the most helpful was a post about gluten-full sugar cookies, saying that a lot of recipes fail because they have too much flour. So I finally found something that worked, but working with the dough is very different from working with regular sugar cookie dough.

In your mixing bowl, cream together eggs, buttery spread, coconut oil, sugar and vanilla until smooth. Actually, I’m never able to get all the chunks of coconut oil blended, but I tried.

In a separate bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients. Add to the egg mixture and stir until smooth.

The dough at this point is extremely soft. To make it workable for cookie cutters, tear four sections of parchment paper. Divide the dough in half, and spread each half on a section of parchment paper. Place the remaining sections of parchment paper on top, and roll the dough out to 1/4″ thickness. (This time, I tried to get away with only using 3 sections of parchment paper by sandwiching one between the two. I ended up scraping one of the sections of dough off into little chunks, so it didn’t save me anything)

With the top parchment paper peeled away.

Refridgerate the dough for at least 2 hours to let it stiffen up. When ready to cut the cookies, peel the top parchment off the dough so it’s not sticking so closely. Then put it back and flip the dough over and peel the top parchment paper off (you will be baking on the sheet that was previously the top, and is now the bottom). Place the cookie cutters where you want them. Even with chilling, the dough is still soft, so I found it easiest to peel the dough away with as many cutters still in the dough as possible.

Slide the paper with the cookies onto a cookie sheet.

Bake at 350 degrees F for about 10 minutes, or until the edges start to turn brown.

Remove immediately to a cooling rack. When cooled complete, decorate how you want, such as with this dairy-free glacé icing.

Cream together eggs, buttery spread, oil, sugar, and vanilla. In another bowl, combine dry ingredients (salt, flours, baking powder, cream of tartar, and xanthan gum). Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture, and mix until well combined and smooth.

Split the dough into two portions, and flatten each portion between two pieces of parchment paper to about 1/4″ thickness. Refrigerate for at least two hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Remove one portion of dough from the fridge. Peel off one piece of parchment paper, then replace it. This will be the paper that goes under your cookies as you bake. Flip the dough over and peel the other piece of parchment off. Cut out your cookies, then transfer the entire paper onto a cookie sheet and bake for about 10 minutes or until edges just start to turn golden. When they are done, transfer to a cooling rack immediately.

Repeat process with the other dough portion. You can also take dough scraps and flatten between parchment paper for more cookies. If it gets too hard to work with, chill in the fridge or freezer.